The Eggman Cometh.

John's daughters are producing some of the most delicious eggs ever. They are very fresh, and the yolks are brilliant gold. Fried in a little rendered pork jowl fat or scrambled with heirloom tomatoes and jalapenos, they are a treat not to be missed.

We love you Heena and Shybone!

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Caught Between Three Obsessions.

Luciya, her febrile brain always a-churn, has modified her Halloween plans. Now she will be a princess dragon mermaid.

P.

Do You Believe That The World Is Getting Worse? Or Better?

This essay by Steven Pinker is counterintuitive (to me, at least), but illustrates how the combination of fear-based media saturation and a predilection to see the glass as half empty can lead us to fundamentally misperceive reality.

As humans, we have an odd tendency to assume that our world is getting worse every year and that armageddon is just around the corner. But actually, in almost every way it's safer and more fulfilling to be a human being today than it has ever been.

Imagine how much less crazy our lives and our politics might be if we actually understood that.

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Headline Of The Year: "Nicholas Cage Awoken By Naked Man With Fudgesicle."

Unfortunately the reality as depicted in this article from Reuters isn't quite as amusing as the picture I know you created in your mind. But at least it wasn't Rick Perry with a corn dog.

Still, these days I get my grins where I can.

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How Many Of These Myths About Social Security Do You Believe?

I don't do a lot of posts about politics, but this is an issue that has pissed me off for years, and it's now coming to a head. Right-wing Republicans have been trying to kill Social Security since its inception, and their campaign of lies and half-truths against it has steadily gained traction in the absence of sustained, fact-based pushback from the media and the Democratic party.

What's new is the growing buy-in by corporatist Democrats (including our "socialist" president) and wealthy media opinion leaders to those time-tested right-wing frames.

So take this test. You've heard all these myths about Social Security. How many of them do you believe? How many do your friends, neighbors, and family believe? Please read the facts and pass them on.

Myth: Social Security is going broke.

Reality: There is no Social Security crisis. By 2023, Social Security will have a $4.3 trillion surplus (yes, trillion with a 'T'). It can pay out all scheduled benefits for the next quarter-century with no changes whatsoever.¹ After 2037, it'll still be able to pay out 75% of scheduled benefits--and again, that's without any changes. The program started preparing for the Baby Boomers retirement decades ago.² Anyone who insists Social Security is broke probably wants to break it themselves.

---

Myth: We have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.

Reality: This is a red-herring to trick you into agreeing to benefit cuts. Retirees are living about the same amount of time as they were in the 1930s. The reason average life expectancy is higher is mostly because many fewer people die as children than did 70 years ago.³ What's more, what gains there have been are distributed very unevenly--since 1972, life expectancy increased by 6.5 years for workers in the top half of the income brackets, but by less than 2 years for those in the bottom half.⁴ But those intent on cutting Social Security love this argument because raising the retirement age is the same as an across-the-board benefit cut.

---

Myth: Benefit cuts are the only way to fix Social Security.

Reality: Social Security doesn't need to be fixed. But if we want to strengthen it, here's a better way: Make the rich pay their fair share. If the very rich paid taxes on all of their income, Social Security would be sustainable for decades to come.⁵ Right now, high earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,000 of their income.⁶ But conservatives insist benefit cuts are the only way because they want to protect the super-rich from paying their fair share.

---

Myth: The Social Security Trust Fund has been raided and is full of IOUs

Reality: Not even close to true. The Social Security Trust Fund isn't full of IOUs, it's full of U.S. Treasury Bonds. And those bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.⁷ The reason Social Security holds only treasury bonds is the same reason many Americans do: The federal government has never missed a single interest payment on its debts. President Bush wanted to put Social Security funds in the stock market--which would have been disastrous--but luckily, he failed. So the trillions of dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund, which are separate from the regular budget, are as safe as can be.

---

Myth: Social Security adds to the deficit

Reality: It's not just wrong -- it's impossible! By law, Social Security funds are separate from the budget, and it must pay its own way. That means that Social Security can't add one penny to the deficit.¹

Sources:

1."To Deficit Hawks: We the People Know Best on Social Security" New Deal 2.0, June 14, 2010
http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/06/14/to-defict-hawks-we-the-people-know-best-on-social-security-12290/

2. "The Straight Facts on Social Security" Economic Opportunity Institute, September 2009
http://www.eoionline.org/retirement_security/fact_sheets/StraightFactsSocialSecurity-Sep09.pdf

3. "Social Security and the Age of Retirement"Center for Economic and Policy Research, June 2010
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/social-security-and-the-age-of-retirement/

4. "More on raising the retirement age" Ezra Klein, Washington Post, July 8, 2010
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/07/more_on_raising_the_retirement.html

5. "Social Security is sustainable" Economic and Policy Institute, May 27, 2010
http://www.epi.org/analysis_and_opinion/entry/social_security_is_sustainable/

6. "Maximum wage contribution and the amount for a credit in 2010." Social Security Administration, April 23, 2010
http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/240

7. "Trust Fund FAQs" Social Security Administration, February 18, 2010
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/fundFAQ.html

8. "To Deficit Hawks: We the People Know Best on Social Security" New Deal 2.0, June 14, 2010
http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/06/14/to-defict-hawks-we-the-people-know-best-on-social-security-12290/

 

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Wow, Prijevod Softvera Stvarno Poboljšao!

A few years ago, I tried and soon gave up using computerized translation software. It was simply too prone to produce ungrammatical nonsense, so aside from a fleeting amusement factor, it was mostly worthless.

A few weeks ago, I wanted to translate some sentences and went reluctantly to Google Translate for help. I was amazed by the quality of the results. At the time I just thought "Wow, translation software has really improved!" (or "Wow, prijevod softvera stvarno poboljšao!" in Croatian), and thought no more of it.

Then today I saw this article in The Independent that explained how Google Translate works and why it's so much better than its predecessors.

The article explains that, unlike previous translation software, GT "isn't an algorithm designed only to extract the meaning of an expression from its syntax and vocabulary. In fact, at bottom, it doesn't deal with meaning at all. Instead of taking a linguistic expression as something that requires decoding, Google Translate (GT) takes it as something that has probably been said before."

"It uses vast computing power to scour the internet in the blink of an eye, looking for the expression in some text that exists alongside its paired translation. The corpus it can scan includes all the paper put out since 1957 by the EU in two dozen languages, everything the UN and its agencies have ever done in writing in six official languages, and huge amounts of other material, from the records of international tribunals to company reports and all the articles and books in bilingual form that have been put up on the web by individuals, libraries, booksellers, authors and academic departments. Drawing on the already established patterns of matches between these millions of paired documents, Google Translate uses statistical methods to pick out the most probable acceptable version of what's been submitted to it."

Of course, the quality of the translation varies depending on the source material available. For example, there aren't as many translations from Icelandic to Urdu as there are from Icelandic to English, so if you need something translated from Icelandic to Urdu, the software will most often use English as a "pivot language," translating from Icelandic to English to Urdu. Inevitably, such extra steps take a toll on accuracy, but Google uses user feedback and the ever-growing body of multilanguage information on the internet to constantly improve its output.

Try it out. It's free, and it's fun.

P.

Caught Between Two Obsessions.

Luciya: This year for Halloween I want to be a princess dragon.

It's only a conflict if you let it be.

P.

Bun Cha Saturday. With Fried Rainbow Crocodile!

At Luciya's command, O and I descended on John and Emily's house last night prepared to whip up a batch of bun cha. Jeff, Emily's father, and Dustin, a friend of John's from Southern California, joined us.

O had brought the girls each a little present, since we hadn't seen them for over a week. Luciya's gift was a book of fairy stckers, with glitter!

Luciya: Glitter Fairy Stickers. Gwams, that's what I've always wanted.

Emily: How did Grams know what you wanted?

L: My heart popped out and followed Gwams wherever she goes so she knows what I want.


Luciya was excited to eat bun cha, which has become one of her favorite meals. But first she decided that her Grandpa Jeff needed an appetizer: a big dish of fried rainbow crocodile with Thousand Island dressing and potato-potato soup!

 He dutifully ate the whole thing.

 Bun cha porn. Yum!

 Though still full from his appetizer, Jeff managed to eat a little of the bun cha.

 For dessert, sweet local peaches grilled with five spice powder, sprinkled with fresh tarragon,
and served over vanilla ice cream.

P.

Friday Night With The Reverend.

Last night, John and I went to see one of our favorite bands: Reverend Horton Heat. The Rev. plays rockabilly with a punk edge. Great stuff. We discovered him when we were living in San Francisco and he was playing small clubs like Club Deluxe on Haight St.

The Knitting Factory is a great small venue for bands.

First up was another of John's favorites: Nashville Pussy. Loud, fast rock n' roll.

The female bassist and lead guitarist were particularly good.

If I had a band, this is the kind of opening act I'd want. They really got the crowd stirred up.

Then the Rev. came on. He announced that the band was celebrating its 25th year of playing

together. They were awesome. The Rev. gets an excellent old-time twang out of his

 hollow-body electric guitar. Note his cool flame pant legs.

They played a solid hour-and-a-half of their greatest hits, ending with two of my favorites:

400 Bucks and Big Red Rocket of Love.

My ears are still ringing.

P.

Bun Cha Every Saturday!

An ordinary Thursday afternoon, until Luciya calls her Grandma on the phone.

L: Gwams, can you come over to my house and make me bun cha every Saturday?

It appears that we need to step up our grandparenting duties.

P.

Rolling On The River

Well, summer is coming to an official end. Labor Day weekend marked the closing of the rafting business on the Boise River. So we went in on a six-person raft with the Cuillo family (Michael, his sister Nancy, and their mother, Elizabeth) to commemorate the occasion.

 It was a beautiful, warm day, clear and in the high 80s. The water, though was still pretty frigid.

Nancy was the only one brave enough to take the plunge, and she could only take a couple

minutes of it.

 The trip down river takes about two hours. Most of the ride is a languid float, but there are

brief encounters with erosion control barriers where the raft dives a couple of feet to much
squealing. Whee!

 We were surprised to find that the river was mostly deserted. It was a very peaceful trip. 

We saw a mother deer and her fawn grazing on the bank and many dogs fetching sticks

and tennis balls as we floated by. 

And so autumn begins.

P.

The Joy Of Flying.

I love to fly. I've been fascinated by the idea since I was a child. So I've always been attracted to aircraft in much the same way my friend Steve Stern is attracted to automobiles. I learned to fly sailplanes when I was in my early 40s, and those silent solo flights are still one of the high points of my life.

O and I are also fascinated by WWII memorabilia, so when we discovered the Warhawk Museum in nearby Nampa, we resolved to check it out. It took us nearly a year to get there, but it proved to be well worth the trip.

The place isn't huge, but it's crammed with all sorts of interesting memorabilia that people in the area have donated.

Of course, the aircraft collection is the highpoint, starting with this full-size replica of a 

 WWI Fokker triplane.

Naturally any place calling itself the Warhawk Museum would have to have a fully-functional
P-40 Tomahawk, made famous by the American Volunteer Group (the Flying Tigers) in China
prior to Pearl Harbor.

Arguably the best fighter of WWII, the P-51 Mustang, whose combination of supercharged
engine, heavy armament, and huge fuel capacity made extended missions over Germany
possible.

And the state-of the art during the Korean War, the F-86 Sabrejet, American's first transonic jet
fighter. Its controversial swept wing design made it the only U.S. fighter able to take on the
agile MiG-15. I remember it as the jet that was always shot down in droves in the many 1950s
flying saucer movies I loved so much as a kid (still do, actually).

I grew up reading and dreaming about these and other similar vintage planes. Their names
and those of their engines were like magical incantations to me. LIke this supercharged V-12
Rolls Royce Merlin V 1650 engine that gave the P-51 its power.

Or the Allison engines that powered everything from the P-40 to my favorite fighter,
the P-38 Lightning. The P-38 was designed by one of the greatest aeronautical
designers ever, Lockheed's Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, later director of the famous
"Skunk Works," and the brains behind the U-2 spy plane and the SR-71 Blackbird. 

As a bonus, check out this History Channel video of a WWII dogfight 

between two P-38s and fifty (that's right, 50) Me-109s.

My favorite type of engine, though is the piston-driven radial used by many
of high-performance aircraft of the 1920s and early 1930s.

These simple, reliable engines were the state-of-the-art for many years, reaching its
culmination in probably my favorite aircraft of all time, the GeeBee Racers. They were

essentially a huge Pratt & Whitney radial engine with wings and tail added.

The fuselage actually acted as a lifting body, anticipating the space shuttle 

designs of the 1960s. This allowed the plane to make knife-edge turns 

without losing altitude, making it ideal for pylon racing.

Jimmy Doolittle, later famous for leading the 1942 raid on Tokyo, 

established a landplane speed record or 296 mph in his GeeBee Racer in 1932.

An even-stubbier version.

A modern version of a radial engine, with stacked sets of radiating pistons, powers the C-130

Globemaster heavy-lift cargo plane.

Interestingly, almost all of the planes at the museum are still flyable. We watched this guy 

working on an old biplane Navy trainer.

Amongst the many cases of mementos, are many examples of vintage propaganda,

complete with offensive racial caricatures.

The museum also has many examples of aviation art, including this example featuring my 

favorite WWII bomber, the B-25 Mitchell. This model B-25 was outfitted with six .50 caliber 

machine guns and a 75mm cannon in the nose for strafing missions.

Duane Beeman, a multiple ace who joined the Eagle Squadron of Americans flying 

for the RAF before the U.S. joined the war, was known as the Boise Bee. He flew P-47

Thunderbolts and P-51s before being shot down over Germany in April, 1944, 

and spending the rest of the war in a POW camp.

I include this beautiful 1931 Packard Straight Eight as a shout-out to Steve Stern. 

A gorgeous car.

Check out the picnic trunk attached to the rear bumper! 

They just don't make cars like this anymore.

Or cockpits this simple.

P.

Introducing PIXxPK.

For years I've been talking about selling my photos, and now I've finally done something about it.

Introducing PIXxPK, my new photography gallery hosted by Zenfolio. I've uploaded all my best shots, and the interface really helps them look their best. The selling part is easy, too. Check out this short video.

Purchasing Prints from Zenfolio on Vimeo.

Take a look at the website and let me know what you think. I'm eager for feedback. I offer a lot of different products, from prints to calendars, mugs, cutting boards, even postage stamps. If you like the site, please tell your friends and family. And be sure to buy early and often. All proceeds go to the P&O Retirement Fund.

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